


The Party

by Natasja



Series: Tumblr and NaNoWriMo prompts [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A weaponised suit is not appropriate party wear, Anti-Iron Man, Do not operate weapons while drunk, Gen, Minor Character Death, Not Iron Man Friendly, Not Team Iron Man Friendly, Tony Stark faces consequences, Tony Stark's bad life choices, Tumblr Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 00:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16460252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natasja/pseuds/Natasja
Summary: Tony doesn't change, because he never faces consequences.Using the Iron Man suit to blow things up, followed by a brawl in a crowded area seemed like a good idea when under the influence of far too much alcohol.It wasn't, and as always, someone else paid the price.





	1. The Party

It was supposed to be just a party.

Just a party, with music and drinks and dancing. It was a party thrown by Tony Stark, of course, which meant that everything would be overdone and verging on tacky. Someone would probably wind up dancing on a table with the enthusiasm of the ridiculously drunk, and Stark would be hitting on anyone even vaguely attractive.

That in itself was enough to make Grace not want to go, but someone needed to keep an eye on Anna, who had been doing so well in the AA program. Besides, it was an opportunity to network. Charity didn’t fund itself, no matter what people liked to think, and drunk rich people were more likely to part with money than they were sober.

Also, she really, really liked the thought of Tony Stark actually contributing to the education and welfare of war orphans, since his inventions and carelessness were the reason their lives had been destroyed in the first pace.

Who invented bomb after bomb, each more destructive than the last, then didn’t even pay attention to who was buying them? Grace was happy that Stark Industries had turned away from that now, but disgusted that Tony Stark had only figured out that bombs were bad when he found himself on the receiving end. Even now, his philanthropy began and ended with funding and scholarships for MIT and other universities that he was connected to, when he had the wealth to send every child in America to school all the way through university. Heck, the amount of money he spent on Parties in a month could have paid for transporting and administering vaccines to the entirety of the third world.

Grace was a firm believer that Billionaires should not exist. If you made more in an hour than most of your workers earned in a year, to her way of thinking, you could afford to give those workers a decent wage AND use the excess to improve the lives of others.  
Who needed six mansions sitting there empty, when Homeless Shelters were turning people away for lack of room? Who needed an entire fleet of cars for one person? Who wasted millions a night at a casino, instead of using a fraction of that money on speaking to a competent therapist like he so clearly needed?

Why, yes, Grace did have a chip on her shoulder.   
Tony Stark probably didn’t even remember the 18-year-old Intern who had quit after two weeks of constant “flirtation” and harassment, but Grace would never forget the countless lawyers who had flat out told her that there was nothing in Stark Industries work policies that forbid Tony’s behaviour, and the Stark Legal team would simply keep the case tied up in technicalities until she could no longer afford the legal costs. That had changed when Pepper Potts became his assistant, but the subtle administrative changes that a PA could slip in under the radar were nothing to deliberate action.

So, Grace pasted on a smile and laughed and networked, armed with a electronic pad of donation slips where all they had to do was sign (Grace would fill in the address and other details later), and trying to avoid the main room where Tony Stark was holding court.

* * *

She stopped mid-pitch when there was an explosion, and the Iron Man armour flew up through the floor, intertwined with an earlier prototype. Stark, and whoever was in the other suit, were brawling, and stopped when Iron Man put the other through a table, then turned to look at the guests, most of whom were live-streaming the event.  
He raised his arms in a victory pose… and one of the repulsors went off, blowing up part of the balcony.

Grace was probably the only one who noticed the screaming girl who was nearly knocked over the edge. Grace lunged to grab her arm as the party-goers scrambled to get away, managing to pull her back on the balcony as the fight between suits resumed.

They dropped to the ground, trembling and exhausted, trying to regain the control to stand.

Grace had barely staggered to her feet when an energy shockwave blew out the windows. The pain of a hundred shards piercing her body almost blocked out the weightless feeling of her feet leaving the ground.

Then she was falling, and the water was rushing up to meet her, and she knew no more.

Tony Stark heralded himself as the Protector of the World.

It was a pity that no-one ever called him out as the Destroyer of the Innocent.

 


	2. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the dust settled...

By the time Tony and Pepper staggered home after Vanko’s defeat, the party where everything had gone so wrong was little more than a distant memory.

That is, until they returned to the Malibu house and found an unknown car parked outside. A bombshell of a woman got out and approached them, and Tony braced himself for an awkward post-drunk-hijinks conversation. As the woman got closer, he realised that she was not wearing the coy smile that most socialites got when Tony was around.

She looked angry, and perhaps a little scared. Tony wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

The Iron Man armour had been removed and stored, so there was nothing to protect Tony when she shoved him hard against the car. “Where is she?”

Happy took the woman’s arm to pull her away, “Miss, I’m not sure what…” Tony’s friend and Driver fell to the ground like a rock when she tasered him, not taking her eyes off Tony for a second. “I couldn’t find my friend after your party brawl. What happened to her?”

Tony felt a tiny prick of guilt, and reminded himself to apologise - in a roundabout way, of course - to Rhodey at the first opportunity. His response to the woman was casual and glib. “Most girls wind up going home with someone they didn’t arrive with, but I can assure you it wasn’t me.”

The woman scoffed, her glare deepening to murderous. “Grace wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot-pole, and she was only at the party because I asked her to come. I want to see your security footage, but the police say that unless I have proof, they can’t require it.”

Tony felt vaguely offended, but with Pepper standing right there - looking like she was restraining herself from saying several things that Tony didn’t really want to hear - he wasn’t about to make an issue of one random woman not finding him attractive. This was not how he wanted his night to end, but the sooner he showed the girl that he had nothing to do with her friend, the faster she would leave, and the quicker he could get on with celebrating that he wasn’t going to die. “Do you have a picture? I’ll get JARVIS to scan the footage.”

The woman pulled out her phone, tapping through the photo app, and followed him and Pepper inside. Tony casually hacked the phone, projecting the photo of two young women, one the bombshell who still hadn’t stopped glaring at him and hissed in outrage at the invasion of her privacy, the other presumable the elusive ‘Grace’. She wasn’t bad-looking either, but still not attractive enough that Tony would have considered taking her to bed, even before Pepper. “JARVIS, scan the party security tapes for this chick. Drink, miss?”

The woman visibly wrestled with herself, then finally shook her head. “My name is Ana, and no. I’d love one, but I’m in recovery. Grace would be disappointed if I gave up because I was worried about her.”

Tony managed not to roll his eyes, but it was a close thing. Why did people insist on basing their actions on other people’s opinions? Tony had stopped doing that when he was fifteen, and it had saved him so much emotional turmoil. He poured himself a drink, ignoring Ana’s twitch. “JARVIS, any results?”

The AI sounded almost hesitant, “Yes, sir. But it isn’t good.”

Ana braced herself. “Can you send me a copy, Mr… Jarvis, was it?”

Tony nodded. What harm could it do? “Go ahead, Jarvis.”

The footage projected in front of them, the slightly grainy quality of the cameras doing little to obscure the image of Grace grabbing the arm of a girl who was about to plummet off the balcony. Tony relaxed when she pulled the girl to safety. Grace had probably just taken the girl home and stayed with her. Nothing to be concerned about.

Seconds later, there was an off-screen explosion, blowing both girls off the balcony.

Neither of them had a suit of armour to protect them. 

Tony blanched, and snapped another request before Ana could actively try to murder him. “JARVIS, scan the beach and water, see if you can find anything.”

Ana’s voice was colder than the time Tony had gone skiing, got drunk with the attractive instructor and nearly caught hypothermia from falling into a snow-drift and not having the co-ordination to get up again. “You’d better hope he finds something good.”

The projected image showed the scans in real time. The water came up with nothing, and JARVIS moved onto the beach. A rockpool had a suspicious-looking splatter, and the sand nearby had a hole that wasn’t caused by any sandcastle digging. The scans zoomed in, infra-red in the fading light. 

* * *

The hole in the sand contained a body, bleeding and broken in so many places that it resembled nothing so much as a sack of pulverised meat. If not for the clothing, Tony would have wondered if it had even been human to begin with.

He jumped when Ana let out an agonised scream and sprinted for the door, sobbing. His defence mechanism would be to make a sarcastic quip to cover his discomfort and guilt, but for once, words failed him. His next instinct was to point out that no-one knew if he or Rhodey was responsible for the blast, but even he could recognise that doing so would be unfair.

Pepper was very pale as she stared at him. Happy did not look much better, though that could be a result of the tasering. Pepper shook her head. “Don’t wait up, I’m going to be on the phone with our legal team all night. This is going to be messy.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This comes from a tumblr post, asking for a fic where Tony Stark faces real consequences for his actions.  
> I hope I did it credit.


End file.
